Integrator Blog News & Reports

Integration, by nature, asks us to open our peripheral visions. We are served to look at the whole of the field. We need to develop new fascia, new connectivity. Opportunities crop up in new places. The Integrator Blog News and Reports is meant to provide you with information, insights and tools to enhance integrated care in the environment you serve.

- John Weeks, publisher-editor

Daphne White: The "Kabuki Play" of Moneyed Interests Around the $1.1-Billion Comparative Effectiveness Research Initiative
In this section of a two-part series, Integrator contributor Daphne White, CHTP focuses on the political-economic dynamics behind the $1.1 billion "clinical effectiveness research" (CER) initiative. White examines what she calls the "Kabuki play" - intense dynamics as the medical industry seeks to gut the value of the initiative, while not appearing to do so. Would you assume that this initiative would look at cost or would inform the care people receive? As White points out, Congress appears to already have caved in on key aspects of apparent value. One wonders if CER can be the point of leverage for reform which White House Budget Director Peter Orszag thinks it can be. And if Orszag can't get what he wants out of CER, what might the integrative practice community extract from this big money battle in which maybe we can't, well, talk about money. In White's other piece on CER, she explores the potential value of CER for the integrative practice community.
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Daphne White: CAM and Comparative Effectiveness Research - Are We Going to Play?
The idea of "comparative effectiveness research" (CER), the new $1.1 billion economic stimulus program, strikes a happy chord for many in the integrative practice community. Isn't this the appropriate research terrain for showing value of integrative care? In this first of two part Integrator series, reporter and regular Integrator contributor Daphne White, CHTP, shares how she attended the "listening session" of the government's CER advisory board to understand what was going on and see if the integrative practice community was showing up. White ended up taking off her journalist hat and testifying. She shares her perspectives on why and how the integrative practice community should be involved. White's other piece on CER is a very well-reported analysis of the "kabuki dance" she witnessed as vested medical interests developed their strategies to make sure that the CER initiative does not gore their own oxes.
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Wayne Jonas, MD on Obama's White House Office of Health Reform: No Clear Commitment to Health and Wellness
On March 5, 2009, Barack Obama convened a White House Forum on Health Reform in which the administration underscored its commitment to take on the nation's crisis in its medical processes. A month later, on April 8, 2009, Obama acted again by establishing the White House Office of Health Reform. For perspective on these developments and what they mean to integrative practice, the Integrator turned to Wayne Jonas, MD, president and CEO of the Samueli Institute, where Jonas has led the development of the ambitious, and long overdue, Wellness Initiative for the Nation (WIN). In this invited column, Jonas notes shortcomings of current thinking and the pressing need for an "Executive office to focus specifically on developing policies and programs for lifestyle-based chronic disease prevention and management, integrative health care practices and health promotion." This posting also includes the full Executive Order.
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Integrative Medicine and Integrated Health Care Round-up: April 8-April 25, 2009
Holistic nurses take on Catholic Bishops over Bishops' position against Reiki ... Oregon Collaborative for Integrative Medicine, nation's top inter-institutional effort in integrated care, expands action ... Minnesota Center for Spirituality and Healing strikes strategic alliance with Alternative Medicine Clinic of Hennepin Faculty Associates ... Community Acupuncture Network seeks NADA alliance in opposing first professional doctorate for acupuncture and Oriental medicine field ... Survey shows low uptake of key NCCAM research by internists, acupuncturists, naturopathic doctors and rheumatologists ... Significant CAM/IM chapter by Academic Consortium for Complementary and Alternative Health Care in new textbook, Collaboration Across the Disciplines in Health Care ... AAAOM hires DC lobbying team, including former NIH and Congressional staffer Beth Clay ... Chiropractors set up ChiroVoice.org to foster patient communication with members of Congress during reform era ... Pioneering work of Joe Chang, MAOM, LAc shows initial penetration of licensed acupuncturists in military services ... IHPM/Intel pilot of onsite manual therapies program show positive outcomes.
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Integrative Medicine and Integrated Health Care Round-up: March 3-April 7, 2009
NCCAM challenged in Washington Post piece ... Consumer Reports finds highest satisfaction with chiropractors for back pain ... Economic downturn and consumer-directed healthcare appear to be good for supplements sales ... American Health Journal and AANP team for 6-part PBS series on naturopathic medicine ... Massage licensing boards under attack in 2 states ... InnoVision, publisher of ATHM and other peer-reviewed journals in integrative practice purchased, exits Chapter 11 ... Lobbyist Peter Reinecke and Jeanne Drisko, MD on Obama's HHS nominee, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius ... Disease management giant Healthways appoints Mark Nolting, ND, LAc to head up integrative medicine ... Andrew Weil's foundation scores coup in appointing former medical school dean James Dalen, MD, MPH to executive director ... Two Integrator contributors, Stephen Bolles, DC and Erik Goldman organize conferences on key integrative practice themes, the Vis Medicatrix Naturae, and business success, respectively.
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Resources

Integrator Archive by Subject for January-June 2007
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Integrator Archive by Subject for 2006: All Hot-linked
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